Why do CPU’s and GPU’s need exponentially more power for marginal gains?

Question

For example, the 7950x at 230w is only 6.5% faster that at 105w. Why is all that extra power being wasted so much?

In: 6

Answer 1

One reason is to add more cores, you can’t just slap on another core, you must delicately build your circuits around that extra core. You need to add more wires, more scheduling & control circuits, etc. That adds propagation delays, more heat and energy loss, as well as scheduling delays to make sure everything works how it’s supposed to when it’s supposed to.

So, you’re adding a lot of performance with a new core, but then you take away a bit of that performance with the added circuitry that makes it all work, as well as needing more energy to run the added circuitry.